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Old 05-26-2006, 06:16 PM
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Default OT - Boxing card question

Posted By: warshawlaw

E77s are frequently found with the slanted cut to them. They are among the more difficult E boxing cards; I don't know baseball E cards well enough to do a straight rarity comparison but they are definitely rare.

In terms of known complete sets, I know of only one person who has one for sure and I think Pete Calderon is close. I have about 1/2 of them but I've never been much of a set guy, so I'm not a really good indicator of how hard a set is to put together.

Over the last 2 years I've tracked a few discrete groups of these cards coming into the hobby, which makes them appear less rare than you would otherwise assume. There were three sets in lower grade in the REA auction, all of which I believe came from a single Ohio find, which also spewed a partial set onto Ebay in 2005 until the seller panicked and pulled his auctions (apparently the guy's grandfather really liked candy). Another 20 or so cards sold through ebay early this year. Other than those groups, I've seen on average only a few of them each year in any venue.

In nice shape Jack Johnson as the key to the set should fetch at least $500 slabbed. The print line above his head does not appear in the other specimens I've handled. Check the SGC and PSA pops for some idea of how few of these cards have been slabbed.

Edited to add: rarity assessment with boxing cards is a relative analysis. In terms of magnitude, there are E75 and E79 black backs which are attainable goals, E76 which is tougher but not impossible, then E77 which has under five known sets out there, then E78 and E80, then E79 red backs, then E211s, which are not even fully checklisted. Oh, and E125, which I forgot about and you should forget about too since there is only 1 known specimen of the Jeffries from that set. It appears that the print runs for most boxing issues were far smaller than for their baseball cousins, making for many sets with few known specimens. Once you get past the two or three easy sets, we are talking one known example versus five to ten known examples in differentiating between the levels.

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